Text Performances and Cultural Transfer

As is well known, a text is a speech act, namely the realisation and initiation of linguistic potentialities. Although a text can be described as an independent entity, it only becomes effective in concrete situations of use. One and the same linguistic product can form the basis of different communicative events. Every text can be understood as part of a performance that has a unique and unrepeatable character thanks to its connection to the presentation and reception situation : a text is read (aloud), staged, declaimed or solemnly spoken, sung, etc. in different ways. Every text reception is also a unique event that is affected by a wide variety of variables. In this regard, the eminently hermeneutic activity of the translator can also be understood as an intercultural performance in which the role of the source text recipient and the role of the target text recipient converge. This leads to a language product that shows clear traces of this individual performance. Different translators, that is to say, perform in different ways. This volume aims to show that assessing the performative change of perspective, a matter which is gradually gaining importance in textual studies as well as in translation studies, opens up an area in which different disciplines can enter into conversation.